Sour
by retired-fangirl
Summary: Acrid, sick bile coats his throat as he swallows another bite of cake. Light realizes something is off with the detective, or rather, something doesn't align evenly with the detective's other quirks. Set during the Yotsuba arc. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Death Note is not mine. Surely this is obvious with my overly angst-filled fanfictions?

**Sour**

…

"_If you use your head, you won't get fat even if you eat sweets," L said to Amane Misa as he snatched her half-finished piece of cake. He saw the slight lift of Yagami Light's eyebrow at his admission and the shake of his head as his Kira suspect no doubt dropped that piece of information into mental storage as one of L's many quirks._

Two days. Only two days had passed since Light voluntarily enchained himself to L. Two days, and he wanted nothing more than to backhand L. "I'm not doing this because I want to," he murmured, holding up his arm, the wrist bound by the six-foot chain. Light bit back a snort at the statement, wholly certain of L's indifference to their awkward situation.

And, it was indeed awkward.

…

_L glanced into his laptop screen as Light slept on the bed, Light curled on one end, and L perched on the other. He ignored the lethargy that always overcame him in the early hours of the morning, choosing to drain his cup of Italian coffee followed with a handful of sugar cubes. His stomach protested at the simple carbohydrates and empty calories, but eating would have to wait until Light awoke in a few more hours. After the first night on the receiving end of a pillow and comforter, L decided risking Light's sleep-deprived wrath was not worth it._

_Of course, Light's malicious anger affected the Kira percentages always at play in his thoughts._

A week. And on the seventh day, the team relocated to the new headquarters. A week and one day. And Light finally smacked the sardonic bastard of a detective, which L reciprocated, attacking back. "An eye for an eye," and "Once is once," L said in a flat monotone, but his cheeks flushed bright red and he wheezed from their fight. Light didn't remember ever seeing L look so _alive_. Then L threw back the rest of his drink whilst dropping the phone back on the receiver, joking about Matsuda's incompetency. And Light found himself following the detective to the toilet.

…

_Kira, L thought as he nibbled on his thumb. Kira, number one and number two: the names Yagami Light and Amane Misa instantly swam to the forefront of his thoughts. He spun around in his chair, similar to an errant five-year old. Because he was L, the task force members accepted his idling. He laid his in his arms, which were propped against the backrest of the chair. He sagged into his arms, feeling ever more incompetent._

_He spun the chair around once more and jumped up, accidentally over extending the chain attached to Light. L fell backwards, managing to land on his toes, and Light propelled forward, falling to his knees. L, envisioning Yagami Light to be the first Kira, inwardly grinned at the poetic imagery._

"_Sorry," he held out his hand for Light, who took the proffered hand, and hauled him back to his feet. L continued his trek across the room to the coffee maker. While brewing another pot, he fisted a handful of natural sugar packets Light insisted on. The coffee machine hummed in the background; L tore open a packet of natural cane sugar and poured it into his mouth, much to Light's disgust—based on the grimace twisting his lips._

_Rustic sugar crystals landed on his tongue, and he chewed them enjoying the flavor and the explosions of clarity as the sugar jump-started his brain._

L gulped down the last dredges of his tea, head thrown back, neck muscles actively working to swallow the half-cup worth of tea, all the while perched on his toes. He stood. "Come along, Light-kun." He dragged Light away from the investigation by sheer force of the chain entrapping the two geniuses together.

"Where are we going?" Light asked, walking quickly to match L's pace. L simply stared at him owlishly and said nothing. Five minutes later found Light standing outside the toilet door, the chain looped through a tiny notch in the door.

He found himself contemplating the design of the new headquarters amidst the running water drowning out L in the toilet. He rubbed at his neck as time seemed to elongate, seconds turning into minutes. He wondered just how long L had planned to chain the Kira suspect to himself: the notches in the door, the lavish and extravagant king size bed, the arrangements of computer monitors and chairs in headquarters… His stomach twisted; he wondered how long L had suspected him of being Kira.

He remembered asking for the imprisonment, so sure he was indeed Kira, but the memory remained just out of reach, fuzzy along the edges and blurred, devoid of color like an old photograph. In fact, a lot of his memories of the past year were muddled and distorted…

L exited the toilet, closing the door behind him, and led Light back to headquarters where he directed the task force, wide-eyed and alert: a shift from his previous languid drooping across his work chair. Light noticed L's hands shook in anticipation as he explained his latest investigation tactic.

…

_Thumb pressed into his lips, L bit down on his nail with a sharp snap He looked up from his perched, curled up sitting position whilst grasping his green tea tightly in his hand as if to draw out the caffeine content through the porcelain into his fingers. Light glanced over feeling L's gaze on him, and L dropped his eyes back to the congealed, uber-sweet green tea. He twisted his toes along the edge of the wood dining room chair._

_Light shook his head and bit the corner off his piece of toast. L resumed his side-glances at the teen. He chewed on his dangling thumbnail, contemplating. Yagami Light was not Kira. Or at least, he could not prove that he was Kira. The killings had started again while Yagami Light had been imprisoned. The fingernail broke away from his nail._

"_What?" Clipped and gritted out between clenched teeth, Light glared at him. _

"_You met Amane Misa in Aoyama on April 22__right?" He sawed his teeth back and forth underneath his stubby ring finger nail._

_Light narrowed his eyes. Good. L wanted him angry; anger encouraged people to reveal their true motives. "I already told you, I don't remember much about it," he said as he attacked a clump of vegetables with his chopsticks._

_L tilted his head to get a better view of Light's eyes and facial expressions. "But Misa Misa seems to remember meeting you on April 22." He used Matsuda's ridiculous pet name to invoke ire in Light._

_It worked. Light smacked the palms of his hands against their dining table and bolted out of his seat, letting the chair crack on the floor at the sudden motion. "Ryuzaki, I'm not Kira!"_

"_So you say…To show our notebooks," he replied, before contemplating aloud, finally tearing off the nail of his ring finger. _

_He found himself pulled bodily from his chair as Light grabbed at the collar of his shirt. "Do you know what it's like to be accused of being a mass murderer?" He exclaimed, his eyes were wide, naïve, his lips parted, still frowning, and his hand trembled as he forcibly held L. The perfect paradigm, of innocence, but his deductions were solid. Yagami Light was too perfect, too golden. He had to be…_

"_I imagine it's terrible," he said from underneath his shadowing fringe of bangs. Reflexively, he reached around with a leg, smacking Light off of him with a sharp roundhouse kick. _

"_You don't care, do you?" Light's statement tore out of his throat, even as he shoved his foot in Light's side. "You don't want to admit defeat, you bastard!"_

_L recognized the anger, but it only furthered proved Yagami Light's innocence. He swallowed the last bits of his tea and stalked off, dragging Light with him._

Weeks poured like liquid into a month, summer dribbling away akin to the rain pelting against the windows. Light deduced he was a genius. Not in an arrogant way, but Light had always scored at the top of his class, from his admissions test into a special primary school to sharing a perfect score with Hideki Ryuga, or rather L, for To-Oh's entrance exam, so after a month of following L around, Light knew something was off with the detective, or rather, something didn't align evenly with the detective's other quirks.

Running tap water, a locked door, muffled gasping, and the splash of something heavy, unnatural, plummeting into the toilet. Two minutes, three, four, five, sometimes ten, before L exited, never letting Light glance at his eyes. Light always scored at the top of his classes, from mathematics and calculus to physical education and wellness.

"Light-kun?" L tugged slightly on the chain to hurry along Light, who had been lost in thought. "We should head back now." In headquarters, L radiated authority, sipping on his coffee/tea or crunching on sugar cubes, his demeanor brisk as he handed out assignments for everyone. Light glanced at L through half-lidded eyes as he kept a pretense of highlighting important figures from the original Kira investigation. L tapped his fingers along the rim of his tea cup as he stared into the looming computer screen. The glow threw L's features into a sharp contrast; L: pale, skinny, unnaturally strong transformed into sallow, ailing pallor, the beginnings of shrunken in cheeks, clavicle jutting, revealed as the detective leaned forward to get a better view of the screen.

L's foot slipped from the chair, his toes unable to remain curled into the plush of the chair gave up the battle, and L fell from the chair. Light noticed only because he was watching. In the next moment, L stood, knees bent, leaning on the table with his thumb pressed against his lips.

"Anything interesting, Ryuzaki?" Matsuda also noticed the detective's change of position.

"No, my mistake." Monotone, revealing nothing. Light quickly glanced back down at his documents. A jingle of the chain served as Light's only clue to follow the detective across the room for a cup of coffee and a generous handful of sugar cubes.

…

_Referring to the moments of suspended disorientation, as dizzy spells seemed too plebian for L. Instead, he chose to ignore them entirely. Years ago, he fell prey to these periods of dizziness, but over the years, as he became more experienced, L rarely felt anything, just a calm haze of numbness. Suffice to say, he preferred it that way._

_He ached to clasp his hands against his pounding head as the first signs of illness swept through him. A benefit of working alone was less susceptibility to contagious diseases, which also worked to weaken his immune system, thus his current predicament. He blinked back twirling rainbow bursts of color that made him nauseous and radiated more pain in his skull, as he overheard Matsuda and Aizawa disputing something._

"_No, I'm just saying it's supposed to be better," Matsuda trailed off, looking helplessly at his hands as if to glean from them whatever information he required to win at the argument._

"_And what's wrong with that?" Aizawa flapped an arm behind him, towards the coffee machine._

_Personally, L could list a host of defects on the coffee machine (it was a drip machine and not a French press; it did not make espresso-based coffees; the coffee Soichiro provided tasted and acted too similar to water for L's tastes), but he figured that's not what Matsuda and Aizawa were debating._

_After a few moments of listening to the back and forth arguments of the two friends, another spasm of rippling agony gutted his head, and he snapped at the two in a jumbled mess of English and Japanese, with a touch of angry thundering German._

_Matsuda dropped the container of creamer to the floor, where it burst open and cream snaked little white trickles against the linoleum. "Are you alright, Ryuzaki?" Aizawa asked._

_L resisted raising a hand to cradle his screaming headache. "You _do_ look pale," said Light as continued typing on his computer._

"_I'm fine, Light-kun." Sardonic, monotone, and in character; the conversation closed._

The coughing, giant heaving coughs tore Light from his slumber one morning in late September. He cracked an eye in time to see L stumble from his normal high-deduction position to an undignified heap, falling on his rear, all the while coughing into his hand. He grasped at his chest, twisting his shirt in his hands as the cough squeezed the life out of him.

Light knelt by the detective, reaching one hand behind his back, placing the other against L's forehead. He grimaced at the palpable warmth. "You're burning up," he muttered, before standing up. "I'll get Watari-san."

"No!" L cried, his voice hoarse; sounding like someone had shoved a handful of glass down the detective's throat.

Light recoiled. "What? You're sick."

L dragged himself from the floor, resuming his usual perch. He grabbed his laptop and pulled the machine to him, resting it on his knees. "I'm fine, Light-kun."

After weeks of accusations and misleading questions, and general bickering between himself and L, Light's patience snapped. He threw himself on the bed, face down. His spoke around a fluffy pillow, voice muffled, "Fine! Keep destroying yourself then."

A quiet, "Ten percent," spilled from L's mouth around another wrenching cough.

Figures, even ill, L spared no expense to torment him. Light closed his eyes, intending to sleep for a scant few more hours, but he laid there, face pressed deep into a pillow, insides squirming and burning into vacant tendrils of ash. He felt moisture leak from his eye; he suppressed a choked gasp and curled a hand into a fist as he shook with reminisces of all of those side trips to the toilet, to L's constant, insatiable hunger.

…

_L swallowed the last sliver, intricately spliced from the whole, of his reasonable slice of strawberry cake—reasonable, if he included other, non-sugary options to his unvaried diet. He polished off a cup of overly-sweet green tea, before standing. Light, used to the routine, followed silently. _

_He thought he saw a faint trace of a smirk on Light's face, but dismissed it, the routine already set in motion. L closed and locked himself in the toilet. He gripped the water spigot, letting the sound of rushing water—suspicious surely, but a necessity, bounce off the walls as he bent over his knees, in his perched position, straining his back to vomit in the toilet. Thrust, heave, thrust, gag, thrust, gag some more, and then it was over._

_L reveled in the sharpness of everything, the clarity that he could ruminate over the Kira investigation, the bright lights and colors that dippped him into an almost psychedelic experience, into the familiar numbness of the routine. Now, he (the three greatest detectives in the world) could focus. _

_He opened the door to Light, whom grabbed his wrist, pushing him against the floor as black spots danced across his vision…_

The link between Kira and Yotsuba wasn't the only discovery Light made on the first of October. As the grin on L's face widened and Light basked in the glory of discovering the none-too-coincidental deaths of business men, Light watched L polish off a piece of strawberry cake, taking time to cut each bite into neat incisions, perfectly matching squares. L bit each forkful, one teeny, tiny square, in half with his front teeth, tugging at the fork with his teeth, never letting the cake touch his lips. It was no different to how L usually ate; dragging the process out over a period of time longer than it would take Light to finish off a similar piece of cake.

No, this time, when Light followed L down the ever-familiar hallway to the toilet, he put his genius to use. And the behavior started again. As L vomited the food back up, forcing laws of nature into reverse, Light schemed.

After a few minutes of repetitious cacophony of sounds: rushing, vibrating water smacking against porcelain, heavy, near solids displacing toilet water, the gasps, breaths, moans, almost inaudible gags, the sickening sound of knees slamming to meet tiled floor, the toilet door opened, the sour scent of acidic sweets trickled out with L. The detective refused to meet Light's gaze, and this pushed Light's machinations into action.

He grabbed L's wrist, dragging him backwards. The detective stumbled over his feet, crashing to the floor. Light pushed himself on top of L, smothering him with his complete body weight. Light rested his arm against L's throat, in case the detective tried to escape. He grinned into L's startled expression, the only emotion Light had ever seen on L.

"You have an eating disorder," he accused. L's eyes widened, then a grin curved his lips upwards.

"Very observant Light-kun," he pushed himself up into a sitting position, as if Light's arm was feather-light, despite his earlier disorientation—sheer willpower at work. "Excellent analyses of symptoms, but you're wrong."

When L sat up, Light, still splayed across him, stumbled against the detective's cross-legged posture. He looked up at L, not yet aware of his body. "But—" he spluttered helplessly from L's lap.

"To have a mental disorder, you have to be negatively affected by the symptoms," L said. He set a hand on his leg, a silent indication to Light's awkward predicament.

Cheeks flaming, Light scrambled back, sitting cross-legged also. "You're in denial," he breathed.

L cocked his head to a side, "No, Light-kun, my mind is sharper after I expel the contents of my stomach."

Light dropped his face to his hands, floored.

…

_The noiseless, unobtrusive digital clock on his laptop internally counted down the last few seconds and milliseconds of his birthday. The clock flipped from 11:59 post meridian to 12:00 ante meridian, or from 23:59 to 0:00, while L pressed a button on his cell phone as he held the phone by thumb and fore finger. When Watari answered, L ticked off an assortment of sweets—sweets which Watari would unquestionably, unfailingly provide him in a matter of minutes. _

_L's stomach twisted in on itself, dancing in expectancy. After two months, he finally, at last, acquired privacy that he sorely missed. He wiped a fleck of drool from his chin that dribbled down from his lips as his mind swirled and drowned with thoughts of jamming sweets and pastries down his throat._

_Two months ago, Light awakened to him devouring his third petit fours, grasping the candy as if it was offensive to him. "All night too, Ryuzaki?" Light asked, and L shoved down the foreign swelling in his chest and tightening of his throat. He cracked his fingers against the numb-shaking. _

"_Light-kun is not a sound sleeper," he said in a detached voice. Now, two months later, L entertained himself in watching Watari assemble the sweets in neat, orderly rows on the far table. _

"_Thank you, Watari." L, entranced by the candies, missed the creasing of Watari's eyes, the frown deepening the wrinkles in his aged face, the heavy sigh as he closed L's door behind him. L launched himself to the table as the door clicked shut. He grabbed a piece of cheesecake, whole, and bit off a third in his first bite. Everything, the stinging behind his eyelids, the trembling of his lip, the knotted ball of anxiety clenched in his chest, faded, muted by cinnamon crumbles and rich/smooth/oh-my-god decadence of sugar, cream, and gooey, like the saliva connecting his tongue to the piece of cheesecake as he swallowed the first mouthful. _

_Another bite, and another, then the mini tartlets, the sugar glazed fruit crunching and smashing between his teeth, the flaky, tart crust, the velvet of pudding sliding down his throat. Fuck, he had missed this. This, unbothered, uninterrupted eating, this lack of restraint. He tore open a wrapper to an imported coconut candy, the tearing of the plastic forgotten in the wake of tossing his head back, coaxing the truffle out of the individual packaging with his tongue, rolling the little ball around in his mouth, sucking the liquid out from the center, crunching into the layers of biscuit and almond._

_His thoughts suspended somewhere, sky-high with the sudden rush of sugar in his overtaxed body, L groaned around a handful of chocolate cookies. His stomach burned; his teeth ached with the continued assault of sugar filled sweets; his mind spun, then crashed back to Earth. Here he was, L, Eraldo Coil, Deneuve: the world's three greatest detectives, sprawled over a low table, shoveling sweets into his mouth, his jeans growing tight around his distended swollen stomach, biting into the stretched skin, as he had been a year ago, and year before that, and before that, and for as long as he stopped celebrating his birthday._

_Sweat dripped down the side of his face as he crammed more food down his throat to drown out the mocking spiteful voice of Yagami Light, "You have an eating disorder." Bullshit. To be diagnosed with any mental illness the individual has to be affected negatively by the symptoms. His retaliation had shocked the teenage brat into silence._

_Stomach stretched uncomfortable, sweat trickled down, following a path along his ear, sweets he had rammed down his throat slid back up as bile, L crouched over the toilet connected his private quarters, shoving fingers down his throat. And it hurt._

_His jagged, half-bitten nails cut into the tender skin of his throat—in, out, scratch, cut, bleed; his tongue crammed to the side, as he shoved fingers in and out, over and over, slid between his teeth as he bit into the skin of his knuckles—desperate, desperate, desperate—and pain bloomed in the sensitive nerve endings of his floppy, useless tongue, and his chest—oh fuck, christ, and shit—his chest, white hot, he imagined the pain—and blinding, and crushing, and would he die before Kira had an opportunity to kill him? _

_He threw up a mess of spittle, bile, and not nearly enough solids as he kneeled on the cold floor, and his statement to Light flickered through his mind. He was nauseous, aching, cold, and, goddamn it all, he was negatively affected by these…symptoms._

Five days after the arrest and subsequent death of Higuchi Kyosuke, and three days after Misa's and Light's release from conviction, Light ruminated over L. With his memories firmly tucked back in place, effectively filling the gaps, he felt complete. His time spent plotting every possibility; every iota of possible circumstances in his confinement, prepared him for this, for L's impending death. He bit back a smirk and glanced at L.

Even without the six foot chain, L and Light sat in what had become their respected chairs for the past two months. L toyed with a box of donuts as he flipped through the pages of the Death Note absently. Light noticed the dank expression consuming L, his downcast eyes illuminated with heavy bags, sickly-white complexion, and gut-wrenching frown.

He also frowned, more at the memories that licked and nibbled at his conscious. Finally, L finished desecrating the donuts, eating them in layers, peeling fried dough off bit by bit like prying meat from bone, and downed the last of his coffee. He popped a sugar cube in his mouth, crunching it between his teeth, as he turned and walked away from the computers.

"Ryuzaki," Soichiro said and Light snapped to attention, following L with his eyes. Inwardly he enjoyed the top three greatest detectives hunched over appearance. L glanced back at Soichiro with a deadpan expression.

"Yes, Yagami-san?" The lackluster voice gripped at Light's chest, but he ignored the sensation in favor of his grandiose plan to rid himself of L, once and for all.

Soichiro shook his head after a long pause. "It's nothing. Pardon me." L nodded and stepped further away from the group. After the head quarter's door shut behind L, Matsuda swiveled around in his chair.

"He looks sick, Chief!" Matsuda exclaimed. "Why didn't you stop him?"

Light quelled the shock that set body aflame, tingling from head to toe. Perhaps Matsuda wasn't as dimwitted as he assumed…

"He is a grown adult. We need to respect his privacy," said Soichiro with an air of solemnity.

…

A/N: You know, strangely enough, I don't actually believe L was bulimic. I hope this wasn't confusing. If it was, basically L deludes himself into thinking he doesn't have an ED because he purges for the endorphin rush.

I totally got this idea from Moonphase 9's A Death Note Carol (s/5533188/) and thought, Light would already know about L's bulimia. It's kind of hard to hide, no matter how smart L is.

If you guys have any questions about this or eating disorders, feel free to message me or ask in the reviews. I wasn't sure what sort of information to include in the A/N.


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